Tag: vietnam
Why War To Impose Regime Change On Iran Will Bring 'A World Of Hurt'

Why War To Impose Regime Change On Iran Will Bring 'A World Of Hurt'

At West Point, that’s what we used to call getting into a situation that was way over your head. It meant there was practically no way you were going to get out of the trouble you were in. No matter which way you turned or what you did, punishment and humiliation beckoned.

It’s what the United States found itself in the day in March of 1965 that Lyndon Johnson ordered the Third Marine Division into Vietnam. It’s where we were headed a few months later in July when Johnson increased our commitment of troops to 125,000 and doubled the monthly draft call-up to 1,000 young men per month. In that same month of March, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, the carpet-bombing of “Communist strongholds” in South Vietnam.

A year later, our military presence in Vietnam was 385,000, and Secretary of Defense McNamara had initiated Project 100,000, recruiting and drafting soldiers who were below previous mental, medical, and behavior standards to meet new manpower goals demanded by the war.

Within two years of starting the war in Vietnam, we were in a world of hurt.

Seven years later, the United States military would go down to defeat by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. Two years after that, the last helicopter would lift off the U.S. embassy in Saigon, and our military presence in that country would end completely.

On March 20, 2003, another U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, would oversee the invasion of Iraq. The initial air attack on Iraqi forces and military and political headquarters in Baghdad, dubbed “Shock and Awe,” was said to have succeeded spectacularly. Three weeks later, Rumsfeld would announce that U.S. forces had “taken Baghdad.” The war that was planned as a lightning strike to topple Saddam Hussein and “bring democracy to the Middle East” had worked!

But the thing about wars like those in Vietnam and Iraq is that the other side gets a say. In Iraq, Rumsfeld tried to avoid the fact that Iraqis were fighting back, even going so far as to ban the use of the word “insurgency” by the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority, the makeshift operation that had been established to administer the defeated country of Iraq.

Four years later, on January 10, 2007, President Bush announced a “surge” of 21,000 new American combat troops into Iraq to deal with Rumsfeld’s forbidden word, the insurgency that had arisen and was leading to the deaths of American soldiers every day.

About two years later, on December 4, 2008, the U.S. agreed with a new Iraqi government that U.S. forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by the middle of 2009 and be gone from the country altogether by the end of 20ll. By June of 2009, 38 U.S. military bases had been turned over to the Iraqi government and U.S. forces had withdrawn from Baghdad. In the Vietnam war, withdrawal of U.S. forces from combat was called “Vietnamization.” In Iraq, it was called a “Status of Forces Agreement.”

More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed in Vietnam. In Iraq, more than 4,000 members of the U.S. military were killed. Tens of thousands were wounded in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands were wounded in Vietnam.

In both countries, the United States had found itself in a world of hurt and withdrew with America’s tail between American legs.

Is it possible to learn from the past, from mistakes made by previous administrations and by previous Congresses that approved the trillions spent for, well…for nothing?

That is the question we face today all over again, as Donald Trump gets to turn the White House Situation Room into his personal playground and plan his way into another American misadventure, this time in the country of Iran.

Here are some handy facts and figures that I can guarantee are not being discussed down there in that Situation Room.

Vietnam in 1965 had a population of 38 million. In 1966, the country we said we were defending from Communism had a landmass of 66,000 square miles. There are no specific figures for Vietnam’s GDP in 1965, but by 1984, Vietnam’s GDP was only $18 billion, with a per capita GDP somewhere between $200 and $300. These figures of course suggest that Vietnam’s GDP twenty years earlier when we invaded was significantly lower.

In 2003, the population of Iraq was 27 million, and its landmass was 170,000 square miles. Iraq’s GDP that year was $22 billion. Its per capita GDP was only $818.

Those are figures for the years the great, big, powerful United States of America decided to invade those two countries.

Now let’s have a look at Iran in 2025. Iran is approximately four times the size of Iraq, with a territory of 636,000 square miles. Its population is 92.5 million, approximately three times the size of Iraq’s population the year we launched our invasion in 2003. Iran’s GDP is $1.75 trillion, about three-fourths the size of Russia’s GDP. Iran’s per capita GDP is $20,000, larger than Russia’s per capita GDP of $14,000.

All these figures indicate the relative strengths of countries to fight back against an invasion like one by the almighty United States. Iraq, when we invaded, was far weaker than the Iran of today. And that goes double or triple for the poor agrarian country of Vietnam in 1965 when an American president thought defeating Communism in that country would be easy.

So that’s who Donald Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, are thinking about going to war with. Oh, wait a minute! I’m sorry! It’s all over the news tonight that Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are not in Trump’s “inner circle” of advisors, as he prepares for whatever he’s planning on doing as soon as this weekend.

That is when the U.S. will launch a massive air assault on Iran, according to a report by Seymour Hersh tonight. There will be “heavy American bombing,” according to what key U.S. and Israeli sources Hersh has “relied upon for decades.” Hersh is the author of “The Samson Option,” the authoritative 1991 book about how Israel built its nuclear arsenal and “America’s willingness to keep the project secret,” so it is apparent that Hersh’s sources in both Israel and the U.S. defense establishment are good ones.

Hersh has written a piece titled “What I have been told is coming in Iran,” on his Substack. Hersh reports that Trump has “signed off on an all-out bombing campaign,” but it won’t happen until this weekend because “the president wants the shock of the bombing to be diminished as much as possible by the opening of Wall Street trading on Monday.”

Does that sound like Donald Trump, or what? The timing of an “all out” attack on the most populous nation with the most powerful military in the Middle East will be timed not on tactical considerations, but on the fucking stock market.

Hersh reminds us that there are more than two dozen U.S. air force bases and navy ports in the Middle East which are no doubt being prepared right now for Iranian retaliatory strikes. Already, military dependents have been flown out of bases like the ones in Qatar and Kuwait. All the air forces bases in the region contain pre-positioned military “assets,” as they are called, that can be used in the air assault on Iran.

Hersh reports that the U.S. will strike “the bases of the Republican Guards,” the elite Iranian military force which protects Iran’s political and religious leadership. Trump killed General Qasem Soleimani, one of the top leaders in Iraq’s Revolutionary Guards in a drone strike on a vehicle carrying him at the Baghdad Airport in 2020.

Hersh reports that there is some confusion about Trump’s intentions if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “departs.” Hersh reports that he was “told that his [Khamenei’s] personal plane left Tehran airport headed for Oman early Wednesday morning, accompanied by two fighter planes, but it is not known whether he was aboard.” Trump has demanded that Khamenei agree to an “unconditional surrender.” We are not at war with Iran, at least not on this day, Thursday, two days before the weekend that Hersh says the U.S. intends to launch a massive air strike on Iran, so it is unclear who Khamenei would “surrender” to and why.

If Khamenei has “departed,” it would seem unclear if Trump’s plans for a massive air attack on Iran will go forward. But the plans for dropping the famed “bunker buster” bomb on Iran’s key nuclear facility at Fordow seem to be very much alive, and Hersh quotes another “informed official” saying of the plans for the American attack, “This is a chance to do away with this regime once and for all, and so we might as well go big."

Hersh compares what might happen in Iran to Libya in 2011 after “western intervention,” when Gaddafi was killed and the country descended into chaos. As he ominously puts it, “The futures of Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, all victims of repeated outside attacks, are far from settled,” indicating that an American assault on Iran that takes out its political and religious leadership might plunge a huge portion of the Middle East into chaos.

“Donald Trump clearly wants an international win he can market,” Hersh concludes.

That’s what Lyndon Johnson was hoping for in 1965. It’s what George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld thought they were getting when they ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A big air campaign and a quick win.

This is me remembering our history with invading much smaller countries with our huge military might:

We’re headed into another world of hurt.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

Afghan evacuees

Forgotten Lessons Led To Tragedy In Afghanistan

The spectacle of Americans and their local allies rushing desperately to evacuate from Kabul brought to mind similar scenes from Saigon in 1975. The repetition suggested that Americans and their leaders didn't learn from the earlier experience. In fact, we did learn. But then we forgot.

Maybe the surprise is not that we had to rediscover the difficulty of extricating our people and allies after giving up on an unsuccessful war. Maybe the surprise is that there was such a long interval between the two debacles. For a while, we avoided such failures, and not by accident.

In the 1980s, liberals depicted President Ronald Reagan as a trigger-happy warmonger. But his two terms stand out as a time when the United States, haunted by Vietnam, largely rejected direct military intervention abroad. He did dispatch Marines to Beirut as part of a peacekeeping force — but when a terrorist attack killed 241 American service members, he quickly withdrew our forces.

Reagan's Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger laid out a set of principles for deciding when to go to war. He argued that "vital national interests" must be at stake and that we must have clear objectives and the means to attain them.

By 1992, the "Weinberger Doctrine" was incorporated into the "Powell Doctrine" by Gen. Colin Powell, who served President George H.W. Bush as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among his contributions was the rule that we have "a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement."

This approach didn't mean the U.S. would never go to war: We did so in 1983 in Grenada to topple a Marxist government and rescue American students. We did so in 1989 in Panama to remove a dictator blamed for drug trafficking. Most notably, we did so in 1991 to evict Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait.

Whether these wars were wise and necessary is subject to debate. But in each case, we did what we set out to do and got out.

Success, however, bred amnesia. President George W. Bush had little choice but to invade Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden used it as a base for the 9/11 attacks. But once the Taliban were defeated and al-Qaeda was on the run, Bush chose to stay in an effort to cultivate freedom, democracy, and prosperity. It was the antithesis of the Powell Doctrine: an ill-defined mission that lay beyond our core competence and was not essential to our security — all without an exit strategy.

It has been clear for years that our efforts in Afghanistan were not working. But three presidents chose to prolong our involvement rather than admit futility.

What we learned when President Joe Biden refused to continue the war is that our failure exceeded our worst assumptions. We didn't know what was really going on in Afghanistan, and we didn't know we didn't know. We were clueless in Kabul.

The sudden, complete disintegration of the government revealed that it was no more viable than a brain-dead patient on life support. All Biden did was pull the plug.

It's fair to say that his administration should have been better prepared for the collapse so it could manage a more orderly withdrawal. But as Texas A&M security scholar Jasen Castillo tweeted, "There is no pretty way to leave a losing war." The nature of wars is that winners dictate the final terms. And the Taliban won this war.

It's commonly assumed that we could have preserved the previous status quo by maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan. But by May 2020, long before Biden arrived, the government had seen its control dwindle to 30 percent of the country's 407 districts, with the Taliban controlling 20 percent — more than at any time since the U.S. invasion.

Back then, one expert told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "The Taliban has so far been successful in seizing and contesting ever larger swaths of rural territory, to the point where they have now almost encircled six to eight of the country's major cities and are able to routinely sever connections via major roads." Sound familiar? The longer we stayed, the greater the risk of being forced into an even bigger commitment — with no hope of victory.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus said to a reporter, "Tell me how this ends?" Before we embark on a war, not after, is the time to answer that question. If we don't have an answer, the enemy will.

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com

Danziger: Dignity, Duty, Valor

Danziger: Dignity, Duty, Valor

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

Donald Trump’s Astonishing Lies About Vietnam

Donald Trump’s Astonishing Lies About Vietnam

When politicians talk in private, they regularly use a cruel shorthand. For example, a candidate who is uninformed, unreflective and uncurious is often branded a “lightweight,” as in, “He is so lightweight he could tap-dance on a souffle.” Conversely, a “heavyweight” would be a politician of some substance, some political clout and personal gravity.

Al Gore — the Democratic presidential nominee who won 543,895 more votes than George W. Bush in 2000 but ended up losing the election in a 5-4 Supreme Court split decision — was regularly dismissed for being so unexciting that his favorite color was beige. The line at the time was, “Al Gore is so dull that his Secret Service code name is Al Gore.”

That was cute but inaccurate. I once asked then-Sen. Gore of Tennessee why he — almost alone among his Harvard 1969 classmates — volunteered to join the U.S. Army to go to Vietnam. Gore’s answer was revealing: “I come from a small town (Carthage) of 3,000 people. I concluded that if I didn’t go, somebody else would have to go. And I knew just about everybody else who was going to have to go in my place…For me, that sort of reinforces the sense of community and nation that is at the root of why you have a duty to serve your country.”

Gore also knew Charles Holland, Walter Pope, James Stallings, Jackie Underwood, and Roy Wills. Like Gore, all five came from Smith County, Tennessee. Their names can today be found on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a place Al Gore visited.

What brought this all to mind was the television interview President Donald Trump did with Piers Morgan of Good Morning Britain during his D-Day trip. Asked about his own avoidance of military service during the U.S. war in Vietnam, Trump answered: “Well, I was never a big fan of that war, I’ll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war. I thought it was very far away.” Trump added, “At that time, nobody had ever heard of the country.”

Trump was referring to the summer of 1968, when he, as a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, had just lost his student deferment from his country’s military draft. There are only two possible explanations for what he said: Either, now in his eighth decade, he is losing his memory, or he really is a compulsive liar.

Take the manifest untruth “at that time, nobody had ever heard of the country.” In 1968, there were 540,000 Americans fighting in Vietnam. May, graduation month, was the deadliest month of the entire war; 2,403 Americans lost their lives. That year, the American death toll reached 30,857 in the war, which became the longest in American history while “nobody had ever heard of the country.”

Both of President Lyndon Johnson’s daughters’ husbands were fighting in Vietnam. There were 221 major student demonstrations against the war on 101 campuses. Columbia University was closed by anti-war protests. Johnson, facing serious anti-war challengers in his own party, announced he would not seek renomination. All this occurred while “nobody had ever heard of the country” where Americans were fighting that long, divisive war. President Trump’s trousers are combustible.

Herodotus, the Greek historian, was right, as we are forced, 25 centuries later, to learn again: “Character is destiny.”

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: A section of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

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